Major mints: Kyrene, Barka.

A district in Lybia, just west of the borders of Egypt, Kyrenaika was divided into two main parts. In the interior were nomadic Berber tribes; on the coast, five Greek cities and their environs. The earliest Greek settlement, Kyrene, was founded by one Battos, whose original name was Aristoteles, a few miles inland from the seacoast, around 630 BC. Other Greeks followed, and founded the rest of the Pentapolis cities. The cities resisted Egyptians and Libians alike, until the time of Alexander. It then passed into the hands of the Ptolemies, until it was made into a separate state for one of the younger sons of Ptolemy VIII, who in his turn left it to Rome in 96 BC.

he capital, Kyrene, based its prosperity on its harvest of the Sylphium plant, which was a sort of ancient cure-all. It appears on the coins of the city as the main reverse type. The plant is now extinct. Many of the coins bear a portrait of the Lybian god Amon, whose distinctive featre is his rams horn; the Greeks identified him with Zeus, and portrayed him accordingly. Most of the other cities used similar types, as they were settle as colonies of Kyrene.